These days, most companies understand the value in content marketing. Just because you’re doing content marketing, though, that doesn’t mean you’re deriving the maximum value from it.

If your content marketing efforts have grown stagnant—or never quite took off in the first place—that’s no reason to throw in the towel. Instead, it shows that you need to step back and revise your content marketing strategy.

Take Stock

Start by gathering data. Conduct a content audit of your website, sizing up the blogs, downloadable guides, FAQ pages, infographics, and other assets you have assembled.

Look at your Google Analytics or a comparable dashboard and see how these assets are performing. What’s working, and what’s not?

If you don’t have any analytics set up, now’s the time to do so! Until then, you can possibly glean some anecdotal data: Did you have a piece of content that got a lot of Facebook likes or shares, or something your customers have actually mentioned to you in conversation?

Get a clear sense of where your content marketing stands before you disrupt it.

Go Back to Basics

It’s important to determine why your content isn’t connecting with the end user. There could be a few things happening here:

You’re not writing toward the right goals—for example, you’re not writing content that will cultivate trust, or that will result in more phone calls or appointments. Be clear in articulating your content marketing goals, and make sure you use them to direct your content creation.

You’re not distributing your content in the right channels; are you sure you’re active on the same social platforms as your target audience?

Look again at these basic considerations and see how your content measures up.

Reallocate Resources

Look at your social media metrics and see if you’ve had particular success on Facebook, or on LinkedIn, or on Twitter. Conversely, see if you’ve consistently come up short on a particular platform.

You may be able to make better use of your resources by cutting losses on one platform and doubling down on another.

Connect with Influencers

Influencer marketing isn’t going to replace content marketing, but it can augment it.

Do some research to figure out who the movers and shakers are in your industry—and start tagging them in tweets, engaging with their content, and forging a cordial relationship. An influencer can amplify the reach of your content and lead to a big increase in your followers.

Hire a Content Writer

A final way to breathe new life into your content marketing efforts is by hiring a ghostwriter—someone who can help you refine your brand’s voice, tell your story, and ultimately offer greater value to the end user.

That’s where Grammar Chic, Inc. shines—and we’d love to consult with you about your content marketing needs and goals. Reach out to us today and let’s start a conversation: Hit us up at www.grammarchic.net or 803-831-7444.

Believe it or not, the holiday season is actually an ideal time to make progress on your job search. Many jobseekers don’t realize this, and as such they effectively go dormant between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. Their loss is your gain: With a less crowded field, you can use the holiday season to really make some inroads with potential employers.

The Gatekeepers are Away

Here’s the first thing you should know about job seeking during the holidays: For many businesses, it’s actually a little bit of a lull. (Big exceptions include retail and hospitality—but those are discussions for another day.)

Indeed, for a lot of companies, the last few weeks of the year are a time when things slow down, people are out of the office, and many employees are simply getting their ducks in a row for the start of a new year. Most teams don’t launch big new projects in the dog days of December, so there’s more flexibility than you might think for you to schedule an interview or an informational meeting.

And here’s the exciting thing: With administrative assistants and other gatekeepers taking time off, you have a really good shot at making direct contact with a middle manager. In other words, your best time to engage with a potential employer may be at the height of the holidays. Take advantage of this unique window of opportunity!

Socialization is Key

While you’re making those connections, also be sure you’re showing up to holiday parties and gatherings. You don’t have to approach these get-togethers as networking opportunities; just show up to have some fun.

With that said, it’s bound to come up that you’re looking for work—and often, you’ll score some meaningful introductions without necessarily trying very hard. Again, this is a unique window, so make sure you make good use of any festive fellowship opportunities that come your way.

Get Busy and Get to Work

One more thing: The holiday season is as good a time as any to spruce up some of your personal marketing collateral. Why not reach out to a local photographer and have some professional headshots taken, then upload them to your LinkedIn profile? As the holiday card season dies down, you should have no trouble at all getting an appointment.

You can use the holidays as an excuse to send quick check-ins to your social media connections—perhaps triggering a conversation about the kinds of jobs you’re seeking.

And, you can use the holidays as a chance to fine-tune your resume—or get a new one written from scratch, ensuring you’re ready to start the new year on a strong note.

The holidays will be here before you know it—and if you’re targeting a new job, the time to strategize is now. We’d love to help. Reach out to Grammar Chic, Inc. today and let’s talk about your resume and cover letter needs.

For many businesses, the holidays are make-or-break. Retailers, in particular, depend on a brisk holiday shopping season to reach their annual revenue goals. To ensure a successful season, it’s vital to execute a sound marketing plan—and the time to start is now.

Remember that the holiday shopping season really begins on November 1—which isn’t that far away! You don’t want to be scrambling to get your affairs in order at the last minute, so take some time to prepare for the holiday marketing season today. Here are five steps we recommend.

Plan Your Promotions

Before you do anything else, get a good sense of what you’ll be promoting this year—and how. Make a list of any particular products you want to focus on, and decide what kinds of discounts or special offers you can afford. Also think about special promotions, whether that’s a Cyber Monday sale of a free-shipping offer that extends through the end of the year.

Decide when you’re going to schedule these promotions—when you’ll announce them, and how long they’ll last. Put it all on your calendar. This is a critical first step before you start producing any marketing collateral.

Build Marketing Emails

Once you decide what your seasonal promotions will be, you can start building marketing emails to announce them.

There’s a lot of work that goes into email marketing—choosing templates, uploading images, and writing body text. Again, you don’t want to be doing this at the last minute. Pick your promotions and start developing your marketing emails today. (Our content marketing team is happy to assist with this.)

Create Landing Pages

As you promote special offers—whether through email, PPC, or some other channel—you’ll want to provide your customers with an offer-specific, conversion-oriented landing page where they can complete their transaction.

In other words, if you send out an email promoting a certain product, you want to send traffic to a page that’s all about that product—not just to your company home page.

These landing pages require some build-out, so start today. Remember to keep landing page copy brief and value-focused. Again, the Grammar Chic team can help!

Spruce Up Your Website

Hopefully, this marketing activity will result in a big traffic spike—so make sure your website looks its best. Some quick tips:

Audit your site for accessibility issues, such as broken links, and make the necessary repairs.

Run some speed tests to be sure your site loads quickly across all platforms and devices.

Look for any content opportunities—for instance, product guides or tutorials, tied to the products you’re promoting this holiday season.

The time to start preparing for a successful holiday marketing campaign is now—and our team can help. Ask us more about our expertise in developing marketing emails, blog posts, landing pages, and beyond. Contact Grammar Chic, Inc. at 803-831-7444 or www.grammarchic.net.

Editor’s Note: There are numerous books, websites, and other mediums devoted to assisting real estate agents who want to grow their business. Few of these mediums, however, provide substance when it comes to leveraging the possibilities of online marketing. Mary Beth Downing is a Dayton, Ohio real estate agent who has gotten off to a fast start in her career by leveraging the web. In the article below, she shares how she has achieved early success.

Breaking in as a real estate agent is incredibly difficult. This difficulty is the reason why so many agents quit within their first few years, out of frustration. I’ve seen realtor discussion boards in which many agents say that one should only expect to sell three to four homes in their first year. As of this writing, I’ve had my license for slightly over five months and I’ve put eight homes under contract. The most exciting part is that each month has been better than the previous. I’m excited to use this article to share how I’m going about growing my business.

The biggest thing that has surprised me, early on, is the extent to which many new agents entirely devote their time to trying to meet people face to face as opposed to leveraging online resources. These online resources can include paid ads as well as things which you own outright (more on this below). It’s understandable that many new agents don’t want to put money into building a website or into online listings. In my opinion, however, there’s a flaw in refusing to do so. If you take the approach that “I’m not spending any money and I’ll spend my time networking and trying to meet people” then you’re only saving money if you value your time at $0. Given that time is valuable, and can’t be replaced, I find online marketing to be highly effective.

In my first five months I’ve focused on three main areas: my website, my blog, and video. I’ll discuss each of these in turn.

Real estate agents can use their website to attract and capture leads

Most agents don’t invest the time or money to create a website for themselves. This is the first mistake as having a web presence helps to validate you in the eyes of potential clients. Simply, having a website, however, isn’t enough; too many agents build a basic page for the sake of having one, but don’t truly leverage their site. You can use your website to attract clients who would have never heard of you otherwise. You can then use it to capture more of those leads and turn them into signed contracts.

I didn’t want a website that simply said “Hi, this is me. I’m a real estate agent.” I wanted something that would actually provide value to potential clients. This is why I had my webmaster integrate the MLS (through third-party software) into my site. This allows people to search listings of homes for sale through my site instead of through a service such as Zillow. One of the big benefits of this has been that individual home listings tend to show up well in organic search results on Google and Bing. So when people see a for sale sign, and search for the specific address to get more information, my site’s listing of the property shows up. People then land on my website and call me from there. This results in leads with no additional time or meaningful financial investment on my part.

Another big benefit is that the MLS integration into my website allows me to automate the follow-up process. The software I use, to integrate the MLS, allows me to add a lead’s email and other information to a database. That lead will then receive automated emails whenever a new listing, which meets their desired criteria, comes on the market. This means that, instead of me having to call someone about a new listing, they receive it automatically. This helps people to be informed of listings they may be interested in and, importantly, ensures that the information is coming from me. I could spend hours, every day, researching listings and calling people or I could have an automated system which handles this task. I prefer the latter.

My blog is crucial to my strategy of driving seller listings

As I mentioned above, most realtors don’t create a website. Of the ones who do, very few create a blog and maintain it. Blogging is crucial to my strategy going forward. The thing about a blog post is that it can be the gift that keeps on giving. Say, for example, that I write an article on “how to price your home for sale” and it gets clicked on just five times a month in search. That’s five clicks every month that I pay no money for and spend no time on after I’ve written the article. In other words, investing a little bit of time provides me with web content, which I own outright, that will continue to give me indefinite exposure to potential

clients. This is why I wrote a comprehensive series on the subject of “selling your home.” I see my blog as a crucial component to obtaining listings without expending extensive time or money.

Video is important to helping me convert leads into clients

One of the first things I did after starting my business is hire a videographer to make the following “intro” video:

This has been vital in terms of helping me convert leads into clients. This has happened in two ways.

First, the client with the highest dollar contract I’ve signed so far explicitly mentioned my video when they first contacted me. In other words, these clients found me on the web and were considering calling me. They watched my video and it helped clinch their decision. Second, and interestingly, is another call I received. I market heavily on Zillow for a given zip code. My video appears on my Zillow profile as well as on my website. I received a call from a homeowner in the zip code I market to. She stated that she had been receiving letters from realtors offering to assist with selling her home (a common tactic for obtaining listings). She went onto Zillow to get an idea of what her home may be worth as part of deciding whether or not she wanted to sell it. Since I market to her zip code, she came across my Zillow profile and watched my video. She then contacted me regarding the listing of her home and, again, explicitly mentioned my video.

The foregoing are two examples of how my video introduces me to clients and helps me to convert more leads into signed contracts. I own this video outright. That means it’s another gift that keeps on giving. It’s another way that I’m getting clients, on an ongoing basis, without having to expend large amounts of time or pay ongoing amounts of money.

I strongly believe that many real estate agents are missing out on their opportunity to leverage the web. This is actually good news. The fact that agents aren’t leveraging the web means that it’s not as competitive as one may think. In my humble opinion, this is the best way to leverage one’s time and money when growing their business.

I owe a big thanks to Amanda Clark and the team at Grammar Chic for inviting me to write on this topic.

The job search is really all about salesmanship. You’re selling yourself to potential employers, seeking to persuade them of the value you can offer in return for their investment.

This type of selling comes easy to some, but for most of us it’s rather tricky. In fact, the job search can represent a low ebb in self-confidence—a season in which we have the hardest time believing in our own value. The more rejections and dead ends you accumulate, the worse the problem gets; and, when you’re feeling a lack of self-confidence, it makes it much tougher to sell yourself.

You can see what a vicious cycle this can be. Yet, it’s a cycle that can be broken. We’ll show you how. In this post, we’ll detail a few practical ways to inject self-confidence into your job search.

Deal with Your Inner Critic

Our self-confidence erodes when we spend too much time listening to our “inner critic”—the voice in our heads that tells us we’re not good enough, delighting in showing us all our faults.

Unfortunately, the job search experience can bring that inner critic out in full force, emboldened by every rejection or every bad interview.

So how do you silence the inner critic? A few possibilities include:

Practice positive self-talk. Every day, devote a few minutes to simply speaking affirmations to yourself. Remind yourself that you are worthy, and that you do have talents to offer. Speak them out loud to yourself.

Keep a list of your past career achievements—all the things you’ve done or accomplished that you can feel proud of. Refer back to your list whenever the inner critic pops up.

Have people in your life who can encourage you and remind you often that they believe in you. Their encouragements can stifle the inner critic.

Practice Self-Care

Something that can really take the wind out of your sails, and cause your confidence to further plummet, is neglecting self-care. Allowing yourself to become lethargic, overtired, undernourished, stressed out—all of these things can make confidence gaps even wider.

Be intentional about practicing self-care during your job search—and that means:

Getting enough sleep at night.

Eating three meals a day—actual nutrients, not just protein shakes or fast food!

Logging some physical activity each day, even if it’s just a brisk walk around the neighborhood.

Prepare Your Branding

One final thing you can do to inject some self-confidence in your job search: Make sure you have some personal branding materials you can feel proud of.

Remember, the job search is all about selling yourself—so make sure you have some sales materials that can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

Having a strong resume and cover letter can allow you to enter into interviews with confidence—and even the process of drafting those materials, in conjunction with a professional resume writer, can remind you of past achievements in a way that bolsters your enthusiasm and self-esteem.

Talk with a resume writing pro who can really help you embrace the job search process, feeling confident in your abilities to land a rewarding new position. Reach out to Grammar Chic, Inc. to start the process: 803-831-7444 or www.grammarchic.net.

Your website provides customers with a peek into the kind of business you run—its reputation, its trustworthiness, and its basic value proposition. In other words, your website hints at how credible your company is, and whether or not customers should trust it with their time and money.

Just think for a minute: There are plenty of legitimate businesses on the Web, but also some sketchy ones. Potential customers aren’t going to bank on your business unless they see that it’s the real deal—not something shady or unscrupulous.

And customers aren’t the only ones who care about credibility. Search engine algorithms also work to assess the credibility level of your website. As you might imagine, a higher level of credibility will improve your SEO rankings.

But just because your business is credible doesn’t mean your website conveys it—which raises the question: How can you inject some credibility into your website design?

5 Ways to Develop a More Credible Website

Here are five factors that can make a world of difference.

Reviews and Testimonials

One of the quickest ways to establish your business’s legitimacy is to simply offer some social proof—direct reports from satisfied customers. Reviews and testimonials are both powerful ways to accomplish this. Just make sure you steer clear of any fake testimonials, which can come back to bite you. (And today’s savvy online consumers are better than you might imagine at detecting fakes.)

Advertisements

Some businesses host third-party ads on their site in order to generate extra revenues. This may seem tempting, but it can ultimately be counterproductive. Simply put, the presence of ads makes your business seem a little iffy.

Regular Updates

Have you ever stumbled upon a website that seemed as though it hadn’t been updated in years? That’s obviously not a good look for your business site, as an out-of-date website can make it seem like the business itself is dead. Build credibility by refreshing your website content annually, and by updating your blog often.

Clear Contact Information

Here’s an easy one: Make sure your company contact information is clearly listed on your website, and invite customers to call or email with any questions. If you don’t include this contact information, it can make it seem like you’re hiding from your own customer base

“About Us” Content

Finally, you can make your business seem more credible by offering some information about who you are. Ideally, you’ll have team member bios and photos on the website, emphasizing the real people behind the company.

Boost Your Website Credibility Today

Make it clear to search engines and to potential customers alike that your business is the real deal—and that it’s worthy of their time and money. To learn more about enhancing website credibility, reach out to the team at Grammar Chic, Inc. today. Connect at www.grammarchic.net or 803-831-7444.

Some jobseekers—experienced professionals, C-suite executives, those who’ve had long and robust career histories—may need their resumes to span two or three full pages. That’s perfectly fine. Other jobseekers—the younger, the less experienced—can make do with just one. That’s fine, too.

The trouble comes when you find yourself in the middle ground—with a resume that doesn’t fill two pages, but also doesn’t quite fit into one.

The last thing you want is a resume with a lot of empty space on it. So that one-and-a-half-pager? It’s gotta get cut down.

The question is how. Making razor-thin margins or opting for a microscopic font aren’t good options, because then your resume isn’t readable. Fortunately, there are some simple ways to tighten up your resume and get it down to one action-packed page—helping you portray maximum value quickly and cleanly.

If you’re one of those more experienced workers, and if you have seven or eight different listings in your career history, there’s a good chance you can cut one or two of them to save space.

Eliminate Unnecessary Stuff

Are you including any of the following items on your resume?

Hobbies

Volunteer positions

References

“References available upon request”

Your high school or college GPA

If so, then just getting rid of these items may be the best approach.

We’re not saying these items never have a place on your resume—but if you’re looking to save space, they can definitely be axed without any great loss.

Keep Your Bullet Points Short

Your career history should take up the bulk of the space on your resume—so that’s ultimately where you need to look as you try to keep things brief.

The best resumes list job accomplishments and responsibilities in bullet points—and most of the time, you should be able to keep each bullet point to a single line. If yours are longer, trim them down, focusing each one on strong action words, numbers, and statistics, while removing any “fluff” or filler.

Also remember to remove any redundancies. If you “provided exemplary customer service” in your last four jobs, you don’t necessarily need to list it under each one; saying it just once is usually sufficient.

Bring Focus to Your Resume

At the end of the day, a good resume is a focused resume—and if you’re having a hard time finding focus, that’s something we can help you with. Schedule a call with one of our resume writing professionals today. Reach out to Grammar Chic, Inc. by visiting www.grammarchic.net or calling 803-831-7444.

Grammar Chic, Inc. is a full-service content writing company that publishes The Red Ink, a collection of informative articles pertaining to professional editing and writing services, writing and editing techniques, and brand management tactics. For more information about Grammar Chic, Inc. and the services that it offers visit www.grammarchic.net.